Dark Nursery On The Underground
Game 2 Part 1: Breaking Dimensions First Thing in the Morning. From the entirely accurate journal of Ted Barnes. Ted wakes up in the hotel with Bill's warning fresh in his mind. He attempts to walk out of the front door but sees the two MiBs entering the building. Sneaking back into the lift he gets out on the first floor and heads for the back stairs. Sensing that the MiBs are running some sort of magical sensing sweep on a floor by floor basis he times things very well and manages to move down the floors between scans thus evading the MiBs. Finding himself in the kitchens he sneaks out of the back of the hotel after using entropy to forcibly unlock the emergency exit and disable the alarms.Pausing in a local pub, Ted scans through a copy of the Big Issue using entropy to see if he can pick up any clues to his current situation via the random selection of words. He notices an article about a housing development that is considered to be slightly shady (and is in fact just accross the street), the location seems to Ted to resound with destiny.The two MiBs enter and talk to a man at the bar who has apparently been waiting here for them. Ted holds back and attempts to eavesdrop but doesn't hear much of note. He attempts to follow them as they leave but quickly loses them outside when they pass a police cordon and enter the housing block.At this point he meets the Akashic monk named Ryo, who Ted notices staring at the building that the MiBs just entered. A quick prime scan tells Ted that this stranger is also a mage, and Ted attempts to introduce himself with the rather unfortunate line "...so you're a wizard as well then?". Seeing that Ted is clearly new to the whole magic thing and terribly confused about it, Ryo agrees to introduce him to his master in exchange for help getting into the cordoned off building.Ted leads Ryo through several backstreets and onto the fire escape of the adjacent building, from which they are able to enter the building. The building is largely abandoned, it's been evacuated in a hurry. There are bad vibes in the air, and the two of them make their way up the floors looking for a person who Ryo is supposed to contact there.Hearing footsteps approaching up the stairwell, the two hide in one of the flats and ambush the man that Ted saw in the bar, taking from him a variety of scientific equipment and devices that he had about his person. It transpires that he is an agent of the Technocracy called Dr Shepherd, a Void Engineer who has been tasked with stablising a tear in the gauntlet that has occurred in this building. They decide against killing him and will accompany him up to the disturbance (reality running thin is bad news regardless of who you are), after he gets into contact with the MiBs and tells them to remain on the lower floors.On the floor above they discover three cultists in the middle of a ritual, carving up a young crack addict who impossibly still seems to be alive. A fight ensues and the three cultists are killed in short order and Ted recovers a strangely marked piece of paper from one of them. Ryo heals the young woman, though her eventual fate is not known by Ted at this time, whilst Dr Shepherd takes his equipment back and begins to work on stabilising the gauntlet.Ted and Ryo continue on upstairs to the flat where Ryo's contact is supposed to be. The flat is empty but is completely free from the oppresive feeling pervading the rest of the building. Unfortunately Dr Shepherd's attempt to raise the gauntlet goes disastrously wrong and nasty creatures begin an attempt at breaking in through the now severely weakened gauntlet.The three characters make their seperate escapes and the technocracy has the building destroyed to prevent further disaster. Ryo and Ted are spotted by the two MiBs (Mr Fox and Mr Dane), but manage to ditch them after Ryo uses a blinding spell and Ted convinces a police officer that the two agents are injured and so delirious that they need to be restrained.Ted is then taken back to meet Ryo's master, who is kind enough to explain the basic concepts of being a mage to Ted a little more thoroughly.Whilst sleeping, he tells Bill about the paper he found on the cultist, and Bill explains that it's a coded map. The next destination on it is Westminster Abbey (apparently in a previous life Bill worked on its construction), so Ted decides that he should head there the following day. Game 2 part 2: Severe Delays on the Eldritch Line. Ted tells Ryo and Master Hu about Bill's advice and agrees to go to Westminster with Ryo. When they arrive they find Dr Shepherd is also on the scene, having detected that a similar gauntlet weakening was occuring in this area.Ted trusts Dr Shepherd because he didn't alert the MiBs to Ted and Ryo's presence the previous day, and the three of them enter the Abbey. Scans reveal that something supernatural is occurring in the crypts below them, so Ted suggests that they join a tour group and then slip away when they get close to the sealed off area that the magical eminations are coming from.All around them they can sense angry and disturbed spirits, but these presences are not enough to deter the group. Ted works a field of entropy around Dr Shepherd's dimensional stabiliser in order to keep it running at peak efficiency, and Dr Shepherd sets it up to begin repairing the gauntlet.They find another ritual being conducted in the crypts, by three cultists similar to the ones from the previous day. This time however there are three victims, who have been skinned and tortured and are being kept alive magically. Horrified and angered by this inhumane behaviour, the group attacks the cultists, and in a rage Ted kills one of the cultists by phasing him out of sync with reality and placing the rolled up copy of the Big Issue into the same space that his head will occupy when he phases back in.One of the cultists is left alive in an attempt to get some answers, however he creates a sentient black ooze creature from his blood which attempts to destroy Dr Shepherd's dimensional stabiliser. Ted attempts to retrieve the stabiliser but is too slow and it is destroyed, however Dr Shepherd was able to use it successfully and the angry spirits dissipate. Ryo meanwhile finishes off the cultist and puts the victims out of their misery.One of the cultists had a copy of the coded map that Ted found the previous day, however most of the symbols are now crossed out. The group work out that the map relates to stops on the Circle line, and that the only remaining symbol (the one in the middle) refers to Holborn. As they travel to Holborn they notice that London has become eerily quiet and there is no sign of any other people. Ted attempts to find an improvised weapon but is unable to do so.At Holborn the group follows Dr Shepherd's scans down onto an abandoned platform, but as they attempt to cross it the platform seems to stretch out into infinity and they are making no progress at all. A scan of the area reveals an artificial leyline running down the platform (similar to ones which had been discovered at the two ritual sites), which contains a horrific necrotic quintessence (as well as a twin resonance that is nurturing). Ted injects some of his own quintessence into the leyline and uses it to create a temporary blockage, which snaps the platform back into ordinary space and allows the group to exit the platform at the other end.Here they find a very strange set of back rooms, seemingly crafted from flesh and pulsing as if alive. Whilst attempting to investigate, the group completely fail to notice that there are runic sigils activating at their passing and thus are susceptible to a suprise attack from several of the remaining cultists. Ted is shot in the shoulder and collapses in pain, whilst Ryo and Dr Shepherd are able to deal with the cultists.With no warning the group is suddenly teleported into a black and featureless void. Here they meet a primly dressed woman (whom Ryo identifies as a Nephandi) and the disgusting embryo of a godlike being that she is trying to create in a twisted parody of motherhood.Despite there being no floor to stand on, the group is able to float and breathe normally in this area. They learn from the woman that she wishes to destroy the world, seemingly just for the beauty of seeing her "child" destroy it. Ted shows her one of the Diefenbacker chips and asks her if she has anything to do with this, however she seems confused and doesn't recognise it.In response Ted throws a coin at her and manipulates entropy to create a field of catastrophic bad luck about her. This displeases her and she uses her own magic to transsubstantiate a portion of Ted's blood into poison which hurts him severely. Ryo leaps forward and strikes her, whilst Dr Shepherd shoots her in the head with a crossbow that he liberated from a cultist. However this seems to do little more than annoy her.Ted attempts to use primal energies to disrupt the growing embryo, whilst Ryo and Dr Shepherd continue to attack the woman. Her attempts to avoid Ryo's attacks are thwarted by the entropic curse that Ted hit her with, and after a short melee she is killed.With her death, the spatial manipulation that she had been enforcing ends immediately. The group finds themselves falling from a great height into a pit below Holborn where the embryo has been gestating. It is far larger than it had appeared whilst its nanny was alive, and about a mile below them. Dr Shepherd is able to manipulated gravity on himself and Ted so that their descent is slowed down to a survivable speed. Ryo however plummets straight down into the beast, changing the kinetic energy of his fall into bright fiery energy which he channels through his staff and into a mighty blow that tears straight into the monster.Unfortunately for Dr Shepherd the sight of the embryo engulfing Ryo as he falls prooves to be too much for him and he attempts to flee through the umbra. In doing so however he catches sight of the god's true form and collapses in a fit of hysteria on one of the platforms in Holborn.Ryo has now found himself standing inside the beast, and is being burned alive by its acidic blood. However he keeps up a furious assault within the creature, hoping to take it with him.Ted is unable to see what has happened to Ryo, and believing Dr Shepherd has abandoned him begins to think that he will die here. Wanting to at least go out with a bang Ted throws everything that he can think of at the embryo. A well placed primal blast begins to reinforce the consensus around the embryo, rendering reality once more hostile to it. It slowly begins to decay, whilst Ryo continues to hack away at it internally. However when Ted attempts to reinforce the decay he over exerts himself magically and causes a paradox backlash, which hurts him so badly that he is knocked unconscious and leaves horrible purple scars over the left side of his torso.With gravity now returned to normal, Ted falls onto the surface of the now awakening embryo. As paradox continues to burn Ted, it also seems to notice the incongruity of an eldritch horror's existence and begins to burn the embryo as well. Noticing that the beast has entered its deaththroes, Ryo enhances his leg muscles and leaps to safety, dragging an unconscious Ted with him as well. He reaches the platform where Dr Shepherd had collapsed and watches reality return to normal as the embryo finally dies.Ryo takes Ted back to his sanctuary where he receives medical aid, whilst Dr Shepherd is recovered by his own people.In the aftermath of the incident (which the Technocracy has covered up as a Terrorist attack), Ted decides to leave his job and spends some time attempting to contact various different tradition groups in a bid to broaden his understanding of the idea of magic. He parts on fairly good terms with Ryo and his master, though the differences in their understandings of traditions make things a little strained. He has also yet to hear anything more from Dr Shepherd (or even what happened to him after the incident), but considers him to be a trustworthy man in an otherwise dangerous group. Category:Adventures Category:Mage